Extra Services

Traffic fatality victim’s mother angry at court

Date Posted: 2011-04-14

Manami Kamiya is angry with a Naha court after it found an American serviceman not guilty in the traffic accident death of her son last January.

Kouki Yogi was killed in the accident in Okinawa City, and a 23-year-old U.S. Air Force airman was charged with involuntary manslaughter. This week the court returned a not-guilty verdict in the case against the American driver, and Kamiya is protesting she’s not satisfied.

The 43-year-old Kamiya is meeting with her late son’s friends, and with the local women’s groups, the Diet and local assembly members to pass a resolution demanding revision of the current Status of Forces Agreement she contends wrongly let the American driver go free. The group has sent the resolution to Okinawa Prefecture and local city assemblies after their meeting in Chatan.

“It has only been a short time since I lost my child,” she says, “but the courts dropped the case in a one-side decision, and I’m not going to accept that in silence.” She says it is necessary now to revise the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement.